The nature and extent of Karl Barth's significance in John Webster's theological formation is widely recognised but remains to be explored in detail. Addressing this lacuna, this essay considers how Barth's doctrine of the triune God animates Webster's teaching on the same. In approaching the topic, I show how Webster carries forward Barth's deep sense of God's aseity in relation to the world and follows Barth in his commitment to the singularity of God's triune being. God's particularity and aseity converge in ‘God's self-correspondence’ (namely, that God ‘in Godself’ corresponds to God ‘for us’), which represents the core of Barth's influence on Webster's theology proper. The final section responds to Katherine Sonderegger's recent criticism of Webster's ‘relationalism’, which counts God's relation to creatures as an integral aspect of God's eternal life. I reframe the issue in terms of Webster's late-career retractions of the language of inclusion and divine self-determination, arguing that the difficulties that Sonderegger identifies in earlier writings are overcome in the final decade of Webster's corpus.

John Webster and Dietrich Bonhoeffer are two theologians invested in prioritising certain conceptions of divine transcendence within their respective theological projects. Specifically, both appeal to conceptions of divine transcendence and agency amidst what they understand to be the problematic naturalisation of theological discourse in modern Protestant theology, particularly within its liberal German traditions. The way they understand transcendence, however, and the doctrinal loci they choose to affect it, leads to different conceptualisations of the possibilities, scope and organisation of systematic theology. Where Webster (especially in his later work) seeks to prioritise God's immanent perfection and aseity through theology proper, Bonhoeffer instead emphasises God's freedom pro me within the person of Jesus Christ. These differences in first theological foundations have important consequences for the shape of theological method and doctrinal architecture within the practice of contemporary systematic theology.

In dialogue with John Webster and Karl Barth, this essay considers the intersection of divine aseity and holy scripture. I argue that the doctrine of holy scripture is constituted by a backward reference, namely, the plentiful life of the triune God. The doctrine of divine aseity denotes God's self-existent triune life, which anchors God's bestowal of life. Construed negatively, aseity establishes the incommensurability of God and creatures by distinguishing, without sundering, scripture and God's self-communicative presence. Construed positively, aseity constitutes scripture as ‘a field of divine activity’, the sphere of the life-giving missions of the Word and Spirit. The triune God who lives a se, elects the texts of scripture to serve as intermediaries of God's vivifying address.

Though Anglican theologians, clergy, and laypeople have written and spoken extensively about the current status of the Anglican Communion, the conceptualization and practice of conflict has itself remained largely unexamined. This essay argues for the necessity of a better theology of conflict, one rooted in a Trinitarian account of unity through difference. It shows that Anglicans have tended to think of conflict-as-sin or conflict-as-finitude. The essay commends a semantic shift that develops conflict-as-communion. Conflict is a means of grace that animates the divine life of the Trinity, enables God’s work of salvation in history, and is a natural part of good human sociality. This theology of conflict can allow generative relational practices, some of which are already in use across the Anglican Communion.

Although Rowan Williams is widely recognised as one of today's leading theologians, comparatively little attention has been paid to his scriptural hermeneutic, and much of what has been written has been critical of the role scripture plays in his theology. This article explores Williams’ biblical hermeneutic in light of the criticism of John Webster in particular. It is argued that for Williams a good reading of scripture must be at once critical, analogical, and christological. While this last characteristic is often overlooked by his critics, Williams’ emphasis on the risen Christ's ongoing presence in the church, and on the specifically cruciform nature of that presence, is determinative for his hermeneutic.